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| Titel |
Thermopeaking in alpine streams: event characterization and time scales |
| VerfasserIn |
Guido Zolezzi, Annunziato Siviglia, Marco Toffolon, Bruno Maiolini |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2010
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 12 (2010) |
| Datensatznummer |
250036786
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The present study provides a detailed quantification of the "thermopeaking" phenomenon,
which consists of sharp intermittent alterations of stream thermal regime associated with
hydropeaking releases from hydroelectricity plants. The study refers to the Noce River
(Northern Italy), a typical hydropower-regulated Alpine stream, where water stored in highaltitude
reservoirs often has a different temperature compared to the receiving bodies. The
analysis is based on a river water temperature dataset that has been continuously collected
for one year at 30’ intervals in four different sections along the Noce River. A suitable
threshold-based procedure is developed to quantify the main characteristics of thermopeaking,
which is responsible for thermal alterations at different scales. The application of
Wavelet Transform allows to separately investigate thermal regime alterations at sub-daily,
daily and weekly scales. Moreover, at a seasonal scale, patterns of "warm" and "cold" thermopeaking
can be clearly detected and quantified. The study highlights the relevance of
investigating a variety of short-term alterations at multiple time scales for a better quantitative
understanding of the complexity that characterises the river thermal regime. The
outcomes of the analysis raise important interdisciplinary research questions concerning
the effects of thermopeaking and of the related short- and medium-term effects on biological
communities, which have been rather poorly investigated in ecological studies. |
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